10 Greatest Djent Bands

Chuggah-chug-chuggah-chuggah-chug! It's time to celebrate one of metal's relatively newer genres: djent! The term was derived from the sound downtuned seven and eight string guitars make when met with a heart-stopping palm mute and was an immediate hit with early bands like Periphery pioneering this new sound.

Periphery's Misha Mansoor (pictured above) began messing with this sound, sharing his music on the Internet, which was met with increasing interest from fans and musicians worldwide. Switching between odd time signatures and a barrage of stunted, staccato riffs, groove was reborn with a newfound heaviness.

Of course, the polyrhythmic fiends in Sweden's Meshuggah had explored this sound decades before it was readily adopted and spread like the plague. While they didn't coin the term djent, they certainly fall in line with the sound that cropped up in the mid-2000s. They're highly complex musicianship set the bar for this genre before it even began be played by Mansoor and scores of others.

Those two bands carry the most weight in the scene, so there was nothing there to really spoil the surprise of their inclusion, but if you're itching to find out who else made the list of the 10 Greatest Djent Bands, watch the video at the top of the page!